After tackling a suite of technical challenges, Hayabusa returned to Earth with the tiniest hopes of having captured samples from Itokawa, an asteroid 115 million kilometres away from Earth.

The Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency has done two asteroid sample-return missions, to the asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu. Special delivery! Biggest-ever haul of asteroid dust and rock returns ...

especially in a nominally dry asteroid like Itokawa. Samples from another asteroid, Ryugu, had nearly no water at all. Yet, two cosmochemists at the Arizona State University (ASU) followed their ...

The asteroid, called 2024 DW ... Rubble pile' asteroids – such as Itokawa around 1.2 million miles away – are made up of loose boulders and rocks that have clumped together under the influence ...